Fee based Internet access provided in hotel rooms and areas with wireless Internet access such as airports and coffee shops requires sign-on and/or payment through a web-based entry portal before allowing general network access. Such environments will not allow access to anything but the entry portal until authorization and/or payment has been established. Requiring users to start with the entry portal is enforced by returning the content of the entry portal regardless of the content being requested by a browser or other application. Authorization for use is usually limited to a period of 24 hours or so; once that period has expired, re-authorization/purchase is required and conditions revert to the state where all network requests, regardless of the requested address, return the content of the entry portal. From the point of view of an operating system (and therefore network aware applications running under the operating system as well), a valid network connection seems to have been established. The operating system and its applications do not have the ability to distinguish between the entry-portal-only network connection and a network connection authorized for general use.
Such conditions can lead to very confusing results for both applications and their users. Under entry-portal-only conditions, not only does it appear to applications that a general purpose network connection is available, but requests for specific content return unexpected content (i.e., the entry portal content) rather than an error. For example, imagine a process that automatically updates files used by a software program by copying the latest version of the files from a location on the Internet. When such a process attempts to retrieve a file through an entry-portal-only network connection, content is returned (the entry portal content) that causes the update program to “believe” that it has retrieved the requested file. When the process then tries to validate the retrieved content (e.g., by checking for an identifying signature or the like), the process finds the content to be invalid and displays an error message so indicating to the user. This can easily lead the user to believe that the content has been compromised and, at the very least, lead to a support call to the application vendor.
What is needed are computer implemented methods, computer readable media and computer systems for detecting when a network connection is an entry-portal-only connection, and for directing the user to the appropriate solution (i.e., proceeding through the entry portal and establishing a general network connection).